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If you just want to use the command line tool `esri2geojson`, the recommended way to install this package is to create a [virtual environment](http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/) and install it there. This method does not require that you `git clone` this repository and can get you up and running quickly:

The module will do its best to find the most efficient method of retrieving data from the Esri server, given [the capabilities of the server](http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgis-rest-api/index.html#/Query_Feature_Service_Layer/02r3000000r1000000/). There are several strategies we use to get the data, described here in most to least efficient order:

### `resultOffset` Pagination

In ArcGIS REST API version 10.3, Esri added support for pagination directly with the `resultOffset` and `resultRecordCount` parameters. Unfortunately, most servers don't support this feature because the backend SQL engine must also be configured to support it. So far, it seems that only the Esri-hosted layers support this feature reliably.

### `objectId` Field Chunking

In ArcGIS REST API version 10.0, Esri added support for the server to return an exhaustive list of object IDs for all features in a layer. Once this list of object IDs is retrieved, we break it into chunks of `maxRecordCount` queries using the `objectIds` parameter.

### `objectId` Statistics `where`-clauses

In ArcGIS REST API version 10.1, Esri added support for performing various statistical queries on the server without requiring the client to download the whole dataset. On servers that support this and don't respond to the `objectIds` queries, we will use a minimum and maximum statistics query to find the minimum and maximum values for the `objectId` column, then build chunks of `where`-clauses that narrow the range down to `objectId`s between two fenceposts.

### Geometry Quadtree Queries

When a server does not support any of these methods, we'll make recursive quad-tree queries using bounding envelopes. We start with a query for the layer's entire `extent`. If the server returns exactly the `maxRecordCount` number of features, we split that `extent` into 4 equal rectangles and query those. If those smaller queries return `maxRecordCount` features, we split the rectangle again and continue until the server returns something less than the `maxRecordCount`.

## Development

To suggest changes or improvements to this code, create a fork on Github and clone your repository locally:

Your changes to the code will be reflected when you run the `esri2geojson` command from within the virtual environment. You can also run (and add) tests to check that your changes didn't break anything:

```nosetests```

## See AlsoThis Python module was extracted from OpenAddresses [`machine`](http://github.com/openaddresses/machine), which was inspired by code from [`koop`](https://github.com/koopjs/koop). A similar node/JavaScript module is available in [`esri-dump`](https://github.com/openaddresses/esri-dump).